Huang Family Newsletter, April 2014

Aaron and Jada continue to chug along in baseball and gymnastics, respectively.  We're all prepping for a 5-K by running on Sunday mornings.  We all went to Amy's parents' for Easter.  Amy and Lee celebrated their 14th anniversary by going out to dinner.  Lee had a business trip to Arkansas, a fundraiser for one of his boards, and a speaking engagement on the Penn campus. 

Are We Guilty of Our Own Less Than Sterling Behavior?

By now you've read about Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling's hateful words to his girlfriend about bringing her black friends to Clippers games.  This comes, of course, right after the Supreme Court's verdict about affirmative action in Michigan.  I'm not in a position to weigh in on the court case - I don't think the decision is as simple as "racism is dead, no racism is still alive" - but I do find the juxtaposition very interesting.

The fact of the matter is that many people in this country - white people, but also Asian, Hispanic, and even black people - do not like to be near real black people.  It is fine to cheer for black athletes (or black entertainers or black politicians), and doing so makes it seem like skin color isn't a thing.  ("But my favorite singer is black!")  But it when it comes time to make choices that involve actual human interaction - where to live, where to send the kids to school, which social groups to be a part of - avoidance of places with large concentrations of black people runs high. 

God forbid that it would ever be articulated that bluntly.  But it is true.  No matter how much tortured logic and no matter how many code words are employed, choosing homes, schools, and social organizations often comes down to steering clear of black people and then hoping nothing changes. 

I hope Donald Sterling's comments made your blood boil.  But I also hope it made you examine whether you share his beliefs.  I know it made me examine mine. 

Thought, Provoking

I run in fairly secular circles.  With the exception of church activities, rare in my daily travels are intersections with other serious Christians.  In many settings, even nominal believers of any faith are in the minority.  In fact, in some circles Christians and Christianity are met with strong negative feelings: mockery, dismissiveness, or rage.

This post isn't about complaining about all the bile or defending Christians and Christianity.  My curiosity is where the forcefulness of feeling comes from.  Apathy I understand; but why does this matter so much that it makes the blood boil?

Perhaps it is indignation.  Christians are accused of bigotry, hypocrisy, and bad politics, so the topic generates an adverse response; indifference is not allowed because destructive behavior must be called out.  

Perhaps it is, ironically, certainty in one's opposing belief.  The main tenets of the Christian faith are seen as so wrong, so morally perverting, or so scientifically implausible that they invite wide ridicule and feverish correction.

Perhaps it stems from a bad experience from the distant or recent past.  If you were hurt by Christians or by Christianity, another encounter can provoke a harsh reaction.

Perhaps it is a signal to others that you would not be caught dead in that camp.  You don't necessarily feel strongly on your own, but by acting so you let others know where you stand.

I am sympathetic to many of these positions.  Again, my thrust today is not to defend or complain.  Rather, I seek to understand, and then to self-examine to see how I can be a better representation of what I believe.

Whether we are religious or not, whether we call it "evangelism" or not, we all have beliefs and we all seek to influence.  As for me, I seek to influence people towards Jesus, and in doing so I must better understand where those around me are coming from and why the topic of my faith provokes such strong negative reactions sometimes. 

Eds and Meds in the City

In my day job, I've had the pleasure of working for and with a lot of the area's universities and health systems.  Today and tomorrow, I'll have the pleasure of spending a lot of time with them, at the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND) conference on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

I'm speaking on both days.  Thursday, I'm paired with City Controller Alan Butkovitz, and we'll be talking about the role of procurement spending by anchor institutions in stimulating the Philadelphia economy.  Friday, I'm paired with Jeffrey Cooper and David Glancey in Penn's Office of Government and Community Affairs and will be talking about win-win partnerships between anchor institutions and local governments.

Living in University City, I am both beneficiary and participant in the many intersections between town and gown.  Perhaps I am biased, but I believe that Philadelphia and its institutions are particularly active on this issue.  I am looking forward to this two-day conference, to contributing my perspective and learning a bunch of things from others. 

I Agree with Ed Rendell x2

When a topic gets covered in Time Magazine, you know it's gone mainstream.  I'm speaking of the growing backlash against standardized testing, which has led many parents to opt their kids out of testing. 

There's been standardized tests for eons, but it's this latest push - Common Core, designed to unify English and math standards nationwide in the US's fight to catch up to other nations whose kids are more advanced - that seems to have stressed out kids and parents alike.  I've heard it in my own neighborhood from friends of mine who've had to soothe their own freaked-out kids.

At an individual level, a parent's care of their own child is practically inscrutable, so I don't judge any one decision because I don't know the factors that went into it.  I do know that those who have shared their decision process have given reasons I find wholly satisfactory and quite commendable.

Still, writ large, I'm troubled.  It's not to anyone's benefit for a nine-year-old to be unnecessarily stressed.  Nor are standardized tests anywhere close to perfect in terms of preparing our kids.  And yet I find it disheartening that we as a nation have gone directly from wringing our hands about falling behind other countries to crying foul as soon as the remedy to our lagging status starts to hurt a little.  Especially when much of success comes from grinding through when things get hard. 

Former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell once famously said, when the NFL canceled an Eagles game due to snow, that we had become "a nation of wusses."  Less famously but perhaps more infamously, he was also quoted as saying, “The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked, and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

There's obviously more than a little racist overtone to his rant.  But there is a big kernel of truth in his statement.  If the kids in China (and Finland, Iran, and Chile) are pushing through advanced maths while kids in America recoil at the first sniff of rote memorization and tedious drills, guess who's going to be ahead in a generation?

One might argue that success is more than just routinized tasks, and that America excels (and the rest of the world struggles) in things like management, creativity, and innovation.  This is not an untrue statement, but neither it is a complete statement.  I fear our kids think the world is all about jumping right to VP of Marketing or Multimedia Mogul Extraordinaire or Chief Designer, when in fact the vast majority of professions are not that, and even those upper echelon jobs require some serious hard skills.

I recall that when I was a kid, I was business-happy, and my parents insisted that I get a hard degree (btw, when I say "hard," I mean quantitative, vs. not easy) and then an MBA later.  Of course, I didn't listen to them.  But I did take to heart the importance of acquiring hard skills, and so made sure that in any given semester I balanced soft skill classes (management, marketing) with hard skill classes (finance, accounting).  

For most of us, hard skills are, in fact, harder.  It's not fun for most people to master the sciences and maths and programming.  It doesn't come natural to memorize the periodic table or grind out calc equations.  But it's what we need to do to prepare for success.  And so it's not a bad thing for kids to learn at an early age to push through hard stuff, even if it's no fun and a little stressful. 

“The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell profoundly added. “If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked, and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Read more at: http://nesn.com/2010/12/pennsylvania-governor-edward-rendell-calls-americans-wusses-says-chinese-would-do-calculus-on-way-to/

“The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell profoundly added. “If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked, and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Read more at: http://nesn.com/2010/12/pennsylvania-governor-edward-rendell-calls-americans-wusses-says-chinese-would-do-calculus-on-way-to/

“The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell profoundly added. “If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked, and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Read more at: http://nesn.com/2010/12/pennsylvania-governor-edward-rendell-calls-americans-wusses-says-chinese-would-do-calculus-on-way-to/

“The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell profoundly added. “If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium. They would have walked, and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Read more at: http://nesn.com/2010/12/pennsylvania-governor-edward-rendell-calls-americans-wusses-says-chinese-would-do-calculus-on-way-to/

Lazy Linking, 118th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

118.1 Pets are getting smarter and smarter nyti.ms/1oZEXwB @nytimes

118.2 Having 3 kids in Manhattan is the new status symbol nyti.ms/1hyVkMm @nytimes

118.3 RSVP here & they’ll Google you to find out what you’re like before you arrive bit.ly/1hXzw7n @arstechnica

118.4 Feeling full is apparently 100% in the mind nyr.kr/1mZft0j @newyorker

118.5 Doug Glanville (Penn alum!) talks about being profiled in his own driveway bit.ly/P0RTBt @theatlantic

 

Solas Awards in Two Weeks

I am on the board of Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians and we are having an event in May called the Solas Awards, which will be a celebration of the work of immigrants in the local economy. 

The event will be at the Westin on Thursday, May 1.  If you’re interested in buying a ticket ($150) or your organization being a sponsor (ads from $200 and up, sponsorships from $1000 and up), let me know and/or go here or here for more info.

I’m looking forward to the event and the networking and celebratory opportunities it will provide.  I hope you will be able to join me and I appreciate any way you can support this great event and this great organization. 

What Am I Working On

As has become my custom every three months, here's what I'm working on now at work. I won't repeat anything from last time that I happen to still be working on, and for confidentiality's sake I have to blur some of the details for some of these studies.

Economic impact analyses in support of multiple applicants to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.

Feasibility analysis in support of a major anchor institution procurement program.

Fiscal impact analysis of a proposed residential development in central Pennsylvania.

Economic and property value impact study of a charter school expansion.

Demographic analysis in support of a proposed community-serving development.

Parcel-level analysis for a business improvement district.

Unemployment analysis for a proposed school in central Pennsylvania seeking funds from the US  Citizenship and Immigration Services' EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.

Economic impact analysis of a major East Coast health care system.

Financial sustainability plan for a neighborhood-serving not-for-profit organization.

Recommended Reads, 17th in a Quarterly Series

Stuff I've read lately that I'd recommend:

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University (Roose). A secular kid from Brown transfers to Liberty for a semester to see what it's like to live, play, and worship among fundamentalist Christians.  

The End of Food (Roberts).  An expansive look at food systems.  This book has a little bit of everything: science, capitalism, economics, and social justice.

Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business (Lutz). It's pretty clear which one Lutz is (a car guy) and who he despises (the bean counters).

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years (Shah).  Loved this deep dive into this deadly and intractable disease.  The author is a good reporter.

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It (Royte).  Another "good reporter" author.  I loved her exploration of waste in "Garbageland," and this one, about bottled water, is pretty darn good too.

Mathletics: A Scientist Explains 100 Amazing Things About the World of Sports (Barrow). Sports and science together?  I'm in.

Lazy Linking, 117th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

117.1 Race, alphas, & "talking white" on daytime TV es.pn/1jAoTvA @grantland

117.2 Silicon Valley acting too fratty to feel inclusive nyti.ms/1hvzGZw @nytimes

117.3 Yeah, there was a font district in NYC http://bit.ly/1lGbWkF @tobias_fj

117.4 A watch for the blind (or for those who don’t want to have to actually look at their watch to tell time) bbc.in/1kIQOZu @bbc

117.5 The long-beaked echidna reminds us we can't always put a $value on nature econ.st/1gBNRaX @economist

How Open-Minded Are We Really

This is advice I heartily co-sign on, from Bret Victor:

It's tempting to judge what you read:

I agree with these statements, and I disagree with those.

However, a great thinker who has spent decades on an unusual line of thought cannot induce their context into your head in a few pages. It's almost certainly the case that you don't fully understand their statements.

Instead, you can say:

I have now learned that there exists a worldview in which all of these statements are consistent.

And if it feels worthwhile, you can make a genuine effort to understand that entire worldview. You don't have to adopt it. Just make it available to yourself, so you can make connections to it when it's needed.

We all say we’re open-minded but we’re really not.  I’m not even talking about being willing to fundamentally change your opinion on something.  I'm talking about being willing to get into the perspective of someone else so that we can understand not only what they believe but why.

You're nodding your head and saying, well of course I do that.  But do you?  Think back to an article that you read or a conversation you had, in which you found yourself thinking that the other person was either ignorant (they don't know what they're talking about) or evil (they know exactly what they're talking about and they mean ill of others).  Maybe you've even called - inside your head or to your friends - these other people ignorant or evil.

This happens all the time.  Democrats and Republicans, Christians and non-Christians, Americans and non-Americans, and the list goes on.  If we are of a certain position on tax reform, or abstinence programs, or gay marriage, or school choice, and we hear something that outrages us from the other side, we are quick to tar the other side as ignorant or evil.  Surely they must be one or the other, because surely the right opinion on these subjects is our opinion, and anyone who disagree must either not be as informed or has a malicious motivation. 

Bret Victor says whoa - spend a minute walking in the shoes of the other side.  Understand the internal logic that leads to their conclusion.  You don't have to be persuaded, but you do have to actually get into another perspective besides your own.  Believe it or not, it is possible for someone to arrive at the opposite conclusion as you, without being either ignorant or evil. 

We who claim to be open-minded yet somehow fail to see how this is possible.  Instead, we tsk-tsk to ourselves and to others who share our worldview.  What does that accomplish?  I hear many people complain about how polarized Congress has become.  Well guess what: we've become equally polarized.  We vilify the other side - again, surely they must be either ignorant or evil because there's no other explanation for how they could've come to the opposite conclusion as I - and huddle with others who agree that the other side can't possibly be right.  

Look, I realize that sometimes we believe that what we believe is so right that we shouldn't let others who are wrong get away with their ignorant or evil views.  I'm not saying be silent when justice demands outcry.  But I think that on most issues that we're so sure about our position, there are actually two (or more) sides to that issue.  And maybe we ought to act like the open-minded people we say we are, and actually take a minute to get into the perspective of someone who believes the opposite of us.  

If you think Obama or Corbett or the unions or the Bible belt or the liberals or the capitalists are ignorant or evil, you're entitled to that opinion.  But, if you don't give them (and those who agree with them) a chance in your head, to figure out the internal logic that results in their positions, then you're being far more close-minded than you'd like to admit.